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Topic: Ibanez Ice Man Bass Q's (Read 316 times)

https://www.shopgoodwill.com/Item/46705484OK, so there's a website that will do nationwide searches of Goodwill stores (for you out-of-towners, Goodwill is where people donate unwanted stuff, and it gets resold and the $ is supposedly used for charity. I've heard stories that they only give a tiny percentage of what they make, but I'm not an expert, or anything.) Anyway, I like looking on there for stuff. About a million years ago, I got an Ovation Viper, with case, for $20 that I played for years. And, once I found the website, I got a couple Harmony/Silvertone lap-steel guitars, and sold the pickups (the "gold foil" ones all the kids go nuts for) for $ for my projects. So I just saw what looks like an Ibanez IC-300 bass. Has anyone on here had one of these, are they good? Right now the bidding is at $99, and these seem to sell for around $300. Assuming it isn't unrepairably broken, and the bidding doesn't go nuts it looks really interesting. I haven't played one in person, but I've always been interested in these. A freind had the guitar version, a real one from the 70's with the weird triple size humbucker and it was cool.

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If it was good enough for Danny Bonaduce, it ought to be good enough for fake bass players everywhere!

I have one of those exactly - I'm an Iceman fan (have several other types too). The sound is what you would expect from an Ibanez: Nothing inherently wrong with it, but nothing that cries out "Oh, that is an Iceman sound!" either. Let's face it, these basses (and guitars) are bought for their iconic looks (or because you like Paul Stanley's chest hair),

nothing wrong with that (or both!).

The pups were viewed in hindsight as a little narrow on these, but you can set them up to bring out E and G string as well though the G string won't jump at your throat. A later version had wider pups, but the result was less than pleasing to the eye and the magnetics interfered with the strings if you came too close.

Just don't expect an especially characteristic sound like a Ric, T-Bird or the two types that other Californian brand insists on making. But no one will tell you "That bass looks better than it sounds!" either. The sound is not hugely assertive, but melts in nicely. Pete Way of UFO did not shy away from playing these, so why the heck should you?

Plus: If you were born largely chest-hairless like me, it is as close as you can get to being The Starchild, sigh!

Legend has it that the name was an Ibanez-internal pun on Paul Stanley's real name ("Stanley Bert Eisen", his Jewish mom had fled from Berlin via Amsterdam to the US, his likewise Jewish dad came from Poland) when they developed the Iceman shape for him though it would indicate poor German language skills there: While "Eis" means indeed "ice" in German, "Eisen" means "iron", so it should have been the "Ironman". So an "Eisbär" is a polar bear, but an "Eisenbahn" is a steel railroad. "Eis" is pronounced in German like the English ice, "Eisen" like "I-sen" ("sen" as in "sent") or as in Eisenhower

itself an anglicized version of the German "Eisenhauer", an old German term for a blacksmith.

The shape already existed a couple of years before Paul started playing one. Steve Miller was the first to use one as far as I know.

You're probably right, it cropped up as the Iceman in the 76 catalogs and was a Japanese design.

The Starchild is very vocal about the fact that his "Iceman" wasn't even called an Iceman, but a "PS-10" which he regards superior to any Iceman due to his input for Ibanez to get it just right. But he only got his PS-10 in 1978. Now that you mention it, I remember Steve Miller with one as well earlier than that.

Aw shucks, that puts my little Eis(en)man story to waste which was nearly as good as the hidden secret about the true origins of TV yellow which we are not allowed to discuss here ...